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Massachusetts

Robert Higgings: Taking steps
11/21/2002
BY ROBERT HIGGINS

Special to The Journal

Lisa Bibeau has moxie.

For starters, the 41-year-old Westport native is running a Fall River classical ballet school. At Bibeau's school, The Dance Academy, students train like athletes and study like artists.

Secondly, seven years ago, Bibeau founded a professional ballet company in a region not especially performing arts-friendly. The troupe is called the Spindle City Ballet.

The odds against Bibeau's succeeding in either venture were sky-high. But she pulled it off. The Dance Academy has a healthy 250 students enrolled. The ballet company performs The Nutcracker every year -- and to an audience of l,500. (A spring production, another "story" ballet, such as Cinderella, usually draws another 1,500).

Bibeau feels she's on a mission.

"It's important that Fall River has culture and that's why we're here," said Bibeau, seated in her Academy/Ballet office on the second floor of a converted mill on Plymouth Avenue. "We bring the art form of ballet to the people. And ballet is for the people. It's not elitist at all."

The Nutcracker, which is now in rehearsal, will play Dec. 2l- 22 at Bristol Community College's Margaret L. Jackson's Arts Center.

Bibeau started Spindle City Ballet in 1995. The name Spindle City was a tie to Fall River's nickname. "I thought it would be a nice link to our heritage," she said.
There are some 50 performers in The Nutcracker , in more than 100 roles. "Some dancers double," said Bibeau. "Some triple."

"Forty-five dancers are recruited from The Dance Academy," said Bibeau. "Nine professional dancers make up the company's main corps. People are surprised to hear that we have professional dancers, but we do. They live in Fall River or in surrounding areas."

One is Dana Nelson, a professional dancer from California who teaches at the Academy (there are five teachers on staff). Nelson is also the designer and creator of the production's 135 costumes.

Spindle City hires guest artists to dance Nutcraker's principal roles. This year, Jose Chavez will be the Nutcracker Prince. Chavez comes from the Pittsburgh Ballet. Dancing the part of the Cavalier is the Boston Ballet's Christopher Alloways-Ramsey. The Sugar Plum Fairy will be danced by Danielle Genest. Genest is with Newport's Island Moving Company.

The Spindle City Balley recruits its tech crew from Swansea's Case High School. "They're kids from drama class, run by Tom Marcello," said Bibeau. They're "beautifully trained kids."

The Case youngsters work gratis. But the ballet company hires a professional stage manager.

The dancers dance to taped music -- a performance of Nutcracker by the London Symphony Orchestra. Within five years, Bibeau hopes to have a orchestra playing away in the pit.

"An orchestra's on my wish list," she said. "It's easy for the dancers to work with tape," she said. "The music's always the same. When they work with a live orchestra they have to be on their toes -- no pun intended.

"Orchestras are made up of people and people feel differently day to day. Consequently, the music is different, too."

Not all the dancers are paid for their performances. Some receive only a free pair of shoes.

"Pointe shoes," Biebeau said, "and they can run from $50 to $100 a pair."

The shoes are donated to the ballet company by Philip Morris Companies , which supplies pointe shoes to dancers in professional ballet companies across the country. "They're made out of layers of papier-mache held together by glue and covered with satin," said Bibeau. "What with sweat and wear, they fall apart easily."

Bibeau, who was born in Westport, is married to Paul Chace, a golf course mechanic. They have a 1-year-old daughter, Larissa.

Bibeau's father, Edmie, taught biology and coached basketball at Westport High School. Edmie, and his wife Muriel, often attended sports banquets. And the fact that they did resulted in daughter Lisa taking ballet lessons.

"My mother would see girl athletes walk clumsily up to get their trophies," she said. "She swore her daughter would be able to walk properly in a dress."

So Lisa, age 3, was enrolled in a nearby dance studio run by Mae Magee Holmes, an ex-ballerina. Holmes not only taught little Lisa proper posture but imparted in the child a love of ballet.

"I loved it from the first moment," she said.

About 15 years ago, Bibeau started teaching, working in studios other than her own. And she was busy, sometimes teaching in five different places a day.

Then, in 1979, to learn more about ballet, she enrolled in two-year teacher training program at the School of the Hartford Ballet. "I gained a lot of information of how to teach and what to teach."

Bibeau, in 1987, started her own school in Dartmouth, holding classes in the Holy Ghost Club. "Once a month they would hold a feast and we'd be thrown out -- our barres and everything were on the street. We'd go back in after their partying," she recalled.

After moves to various locations, The Dance Academy located in the former mill on Plymouth Avenue last year. Two roomy studios and assorted private offices made up the Academy space.

Keeping it all running smoothly is a six-day-a-week job for Bibeau. As for the Spindle City Ballet, it's only marginally profitable. Which, for now, is OK with Bibeau.

"We're here blazing a trail," she said.